“VEERA, THE floor is yours.” Edwin, the manager of her team, smiled encouragingly across the table.

The smile was mostly for show, she knew, because he’d made perfectly clear he had precious little confidence in her idea. However, despite his reservations—which he’d enumerated several times for her over coffee during the course of the previous week—his team had a quota of developer pitches to make during the quarter, and at this late date he had no other options.

She opened her laptop and connected the display cable. The wall at the end of the conference room came to life, showing the first slide of her presentation. The hot-pink glow from the monitor flooded the room, basking all in attendance in the reflected glory of her cupid-decorated title slide.

Veera glanced around the room and immediately regretted not asking one of the web designers for advice on her color palette. She cleared her throat nervously.

“Thank you, Edwin.” Her voice sounded small. She wasn’t confident it had even traveled to the end of the suddenly miles-long conference table.

Focus, Veera. Find your voice.

“Artificial intelligence has never been applied to relationship discovery,” she began, using the company’s preferred term for online dating. “Today I’d like to present a vision for how AI can be a significant differentiator for our service. I call it the ‘epistemology engine.’ Our current data-mining processes work very well, but like all post hoc analytics, they allow only future optimization based on past performance. What they cannot do is dynamically adapt the discovery model in real time. In short, they do a great job of helping the next customer, but they can do little to help the current one.”

Veera looked out across a conference room full of skeptical expressions. She swallowed hard and tried to remember to breathe.

“Today, I’d like to introduce you to the future of relationship discovery. Artificial intelligence that learns and adapts, accompanying our customers through their daily online lives, becoming a trusted friend as much as a matchmaker.” She paused to look around the room. This was the moment she’d practiced for a full sleepless week. “I’d like you to meet Archer.”

—–

“MRS. SCHWARTZMANN, you really should stop putting melon rinds down the garbage disposal. It can’t handle them.”

“I know, I know,” she replied, holding her hands up as if yielding the responsibility for her kitchen habits to a higher power. “You are so nice to come help an old woman.”

“I’m just doing my job.” Drew smiled, incapable of being angry at Mrs. Schwartzmann. “Besides, it’s always fun to try to guess what’s happened when you call.”

“Ach,” Mrs. Schwartzmann grunted, eyes heavenward. “Such an old building. No wonder things go wrong. They should take better care.”

“The building is five years old,” Drew said, as he always did. “It was brand-new when you moved into it. I helped you with your boxes, remember?”

“Ach,” Mrs. Schwartzmann said again. “The vapors from the paint nearly killed me that night. You would think they would let it air for a minute before putting an old woman here to sleep.”

“We live in a world fraught with risk,” Drew offered solemnly, marveling at her ability to come up with an endless supply of new complaints. For a woman who rarely left her apartment, she was relentlessly inventive when it came to enumerating the wrongs perpetrated against her by the shadowy “they.”

Mrs. Schwartzmann nodded gravely, clearly heartened to have the young man’s sympathy.

“There, I think that’s got it,” Drew said, pulling the last of the half-shredded melon rinds from the disposal. He turned the water on and flipped the switch. The unit hummed quietly.

“Thank you, thank you,” sang Mrs. Schwartzmann. She reached up and grabbed him by the cheeks, then kissed each one. She did this every time, and every time he felt like a precocious grandchild. “Now, I make us some tea, and you tell me about last night. Sit.”

The prospect of hashing over the catastrophe of last night’s date with Mrs. Schwartzmann—a woman more than three times his age—would have given most men pause, but Drew was quite accustomed to it by now. He found her commiseration, and often her advice, heartening.

“I assume you heard how it ended?” he asked as she put the kettle on.

She sat, the small square kitchen table between them. “Only that she broke all your furniture,” she said mildly as she smoothed the shiny plastic tablecloth with her gnarled hands.

“It was just the coffee table,” Drew replied, “but yes, she reduced it to kindling.”

“This woman does not sound like such a very nice woman,” Mrs. Schwartzmann opined solemnly.

“No, she didn’t turn out to be a very nice woman.”

She put her hand on his. “I am sure she seemed much nicer when you met her. A woman like that waits until she gets a man on her hook, and then poof! A she-monster.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Drew said shrugging. “I hadn’t met her before our date.”

Mrs. Schwartzmann tucked her lips in silent judgment, as if Drew had admitted to a gambling habit. She nodded. “Oh, I see. She was one of the women you meet on the computer. How can you tell, when you only know her by what she type-type-types. Is it so hard to type things that are not true? It is not so hard.”

Drew chuckled grimly. “If I had asked whether she was insane and she said no, then I would say she lied. But I didn’t ask. According to the dating site, we were supposed to be a good match.”

Mrs. Schwartzmann’s brows drew into a solid black line of dark implication. “The computer machine tells you to date an insane crazy woman… and you? You do it.” She shook her head slowly, but her expression softened into one of pity.

Drew was spared further aspersions on his dating strategy by the tea kettle beginning its low, trainlike whistle. Mrs. Schwartzmann pushed herself to a standing position and began fussing with tea.

“She didn’t seem crazy, at least at first,” he said rather lamely. “We were into a lot of the same things.”

“Things like breaking the furniture?” Mrs. Schwartzmann asked lightly without turning from the counter where she was arranging teacups on saucers.

“Very funny. We listened to the same kinds of music and had read a lot of the same books, and our political views were pretty much identical. We liked a lot of the same things—we should have been completely compatible.”

Mrs. Schwartzmann gently placed the cups and saucers on the table. “If the things you like make you completely compatible with a crazy woman, then maybe you are liking the wrong things.” She shrugged, which was her way of conveying certainty in her opinion. She turned back to pick up the teapot.

“You don’t understand how online dating works,” Drew said, taking it upon himself once more to acquaint Mrs. Schwartzmann with the modern world. “You tell the computer about yourself, and then it finds people that you are compatible with. It’s how everyone dates now.”

“If that’s how everyone dates, I should have stock in the coffee table company.” She set the enormous teapot between them and took her seat.

“The coffee table was an accident,” Drew said. “Mostly. I think.”

—–

“CONVERSATIONAL REFERENCES to sports.” Tap-tap-tap. “Zero. Mentions of history of mental illness in the family, also zero. Hmm.” Rapid-fire clicks and taps on the keyboard echoed through the strenuously clean kitchen. “Number of attempts to pay the dinner check, and height of heels in inches, and number of visible piercings, and done.”

Fox sat back and picked up his coffee mug for a long, meditative sip before scrolling down to see the final score at the bottom of his spreadsheet. The number in the last cell wasn’t what he was expecting.

“Hmm.”

A chat window titled Video Call from Chad popped open, covering the spreadsheet. He tapped the Accept button.

“Hey, buddy,” Chad said cheerfully. Behind him loomed a deeply cushioned leather headboard. “How’s Foxy this morning? What do the numbers say?”

Fox smiled into the camera atop his laptop screen. “The numbers aren’t what I was hoping for,” he said with a good-natured shrug. “I kind of liked this one, so I was a little surprised that she netted out at seventy-two.”

“Ouch,” Chad said, wincing sympathetically. “Sorry, man. Her pictures were awesome. I was pulling for you.”

“The numbers don’t lie, man,” Fox answered with a shrug.

“So she’ll be getting the email this morning?”

Fox nodded. “I just need to figure out which one.”

“I thought low seventies got ‘we both knew it wasn’t working.’”

“Yeah, normally. But I really thought we were doing better than the low seventies. Her dinner conversation was a lot better than my Sunday evening last week, and that one was in the upper seventies. I was kind of surprised that she netted out where she did.”

“Are you sure you entered everything correctly?”

“You’re asking me if I know how to do data entry? In the spreadsheet I’ve been using for five years?”

Chad laughed. “Maybe it’s time to revise the formulas.”

“No one said it was going to be easy, and I’m not going to lower my standards now.” Fox opened an email window and selected the “low seventies” template.

“What’s the queue look like for the weekend?” Chad asked.

“Got a brunch today, then a dinner, and a hike on Sunday.”

“Three more chances to find Ms. Right,” Chad said cheerfully. “She’s out there, and you’ll find her.”

“Thanks, man. And pull up your covers—I don’t need to see your nipples first thing in the morning.”

“I like his nipples,” called a woman’s voice from somewhere off-camera. “I think they’re sexy.”

“Agree to disagree, Mia,” Fox shouted into his laptop.

“Are you telling me you don’t think my nipples are sexy, Fox?” Chad winked and gave his heavily muscled pectorals a stripper-like shake at the camera.

“Good thing I haven’t had breakfast yet,” Fox said as he closed the lid of his laptop.

—–

FOX, IN the elevator on the way back to his office after lunch, read the message with a furrowed brow. He monitored his phone closely for Q*pid updates, knowing that women were more likely to interact if men responded to potential matches within seconds rather than hours or even minutes. In the race to get to Ms. Right, he was going to be first across the finish line.

He read the message again. Having been an active user of the service for a couple of years, he was a little flattered that he was being given an exclusive notification, and he certainly liked the idea of artificial intelligence being applied to his quest to find the woman of his dreams. He tapped and read the description of the service.

Give our new AI engine access to your social media profiles, and it will analyze everything you do online to match you to only those women who are most compatible with you—not because of what they say about themselves, but what advanced algorithms discover them to be. This is analysis on a deeper level than any relationship discovery service has ever accomplished before.

Fox pondered this for a moment. Like most people he knew, he carefully curated aspects of his online presence; his LinkedIn profile was the product of constant grooming, and the only photos that went on his Facebook were those that showed him in a particularly flattering light.

Anyone can crawl the web and see your public profile. But for this new service to deliver the best results, we will ask you for all of your social media login information. Only by analyzing everything you do online can our AI brain really get to know you, and deliver the kinds of relationship results that endless questionnaires and disappointing first dates could never come close to.

He frowned. He wasn’t at all sure that giving Q*pid this kind of access was a good idea. With those logins, a hacker could pretty seriously break his life.

We know you’re concerned with privacy. We’re absolutely obsessed with it. In five years of operation, Q*pid has never suffered a security breach or loss of customer data. And only the AI engine will have access to your social media and web usage information—no human will be able to access it, and our strong encryption protects your data end-to-end. We use VPN tunneling to ensure that even your internet service provider cannot intercept your data.

Fox reached his desk, at which he sat without taking his eyes off his phone. He considered the implications of allowing the kind of invasive data-gathering that this new AI thing would require. On the one hand, it would be foolish to allow anyone that kind of access. On the other, he liked the idea of being an early adopter of AI dating services. Plus, he could use some additional analytics behind his spreadsheet-centered approach to relationships. He hadn’t had a score above eighty-three in weeks.

We invite you to be among the first—and the very few—of our customers to use our AI service. Though final pricing has yet to be determined, we’re giving you a chance to try it for free. Of course, you may stop using the service at any point, and we’ll delete your data completely. You’re in control.

He took a deep breath and tapped the Accept button.

—–

Supercharge your love life with our new supercomputer.

Well, that wasn’t what Drew was expecting to see when he felt the heartbeat vibration of his phone. Normally these updates were notifications that his profile had been viewed by the next crazy woman in line. He figured he’d be staring at a profile pic and wondering what piece of furniture he’d next be dropping piece by piece into his garbage can. He read the message again, then tapped through to find out what it meant.

We get it, Drew. You’ve had twenty-three first dates in the last three months, and not one of them has resulted in the kind of relationship you’ve always dreamed of.

“Huh.” He hadn’t expected such blunt talk from his dating app. Though every word was true.

We want to help. Sign on for our new service—free of charge during this trial period—and we guarantee you’ll get matches that are better than you’ve ever imagined.

Maybe his furniture was going to be safe after all.

How do we do it? We use the power of a supercomputer to get to know you through your online activity—the real you—and we crunch the numbers to match you with women who are truly compatible. Your next first date may be your last, Drew. Sign up today.

Am I really that pathetic? He looked around his apartment, at its rather dismal offering of second- and third-hand furniture, the single bowl on the counter in which the dregs of his ramen were already hardening into concrete. Yes, yes I am.

Through the ceiling he heard Mrs. Schwartzmann shuffling through her empty apartment. The bleakest possible vision of his lonely future, literally hanging over his head.

“What the hell?” he said to the place where his coffee table used to be. “It’s not like it can get any worse.” He stared at the screen, his thumb over the button. Never the decisive type, he knew himself to be all the less so when facing decisions that really mattered. He chewed the inside of his lip.

He jumped when his phone buzzed to let him know he needed to leave now if he was going to get to his seminar on time.

Following a quick tap on the Accept button, he slipped the phone into his pocket, then grabbed his book bag and headed out of the apartment.

—–

A CHIME from Fox’s phone made his eyelids flutter but not open. In his half sleep, he recognized the Q*pid notification sound. That he heard it at all meant that a match of at least 85 percent had been found.

A second chime sounded. He opened his eyes and checked the time on the clock next to his bed. It was ten minutes to six. The second chime meant that the match Q*pid wanted him to know about was at least ninety percent.

The third chime was still dying away when he grabbed his phone. He’d never before heard a third chime, but he knew full well what it meant: there was a match with a success potential of more than 95 percent waiting for him. He brought to phone to him and tapped on the notification.

A 99.5 percent match is waiting for you! the message said.

“Fuck,” Fox said out loud. He’d never even seen a match higher than 95 percent, and never dreamed there could be such a thing as a match in excess of 99 percent.

He tapped the link so see who this woman, this perfect specimen, this impossible angel, could be. Whoever she was, she was the woman he’d been searching his whole life for.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, the picture was waiting for him.

“Fuck!”

His phone flew across the room, then skidded under his dresser before crashing into the wall behind.

“Fucking fuck!” Fox shouted, shaking his head to clear it of what he’d seen. He was breathing hard, and for the next few minutes was certain the walls of his bedroom were closing in on him.

He flopped back onto his pillow and stared hard at the ceiling.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

—–

“WHAT DOES the computer tell you to do?” Mrs. Schwartzmann asked, peering over Drew’s shoulder.

“It wants me to remind you that avocado pits shouldn’t go down the disposal.”

“But so slippery they are,” she replied. “I try to keep it from going down drain, but I could not hold on.”

Drew sighed. “Then you should reach down and pull it out, not turn the disposal on.”

“Put my hand in the place where the blades spin so fast?” Mrs. Schwartzmann recoiled from the very idea.

“The blades only spin if you turn them on.”

“That is what they say. Then your hand into drain you put, and before you know what is happening, the blades start with spinning.”

“Well, now the blades won’t spin at all, and unless I find something on YouTube that shows me where to stick this little wrench, they’ll never spin again. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

“But my sink is full of water.”

“That’s the price of safety, Mrs. Schwartzmann.”

Her shrug conveyed clearly her belief that there was no such thing as safety, not at any price. “While you look on the computer, I will make some eggs. With avocado.”

He managed a smile as he scrolled through yet another page full of videos. “What’s better at six in the morning on a Saturday than your soft-boiled eggs and avocado?” Another three hours of sleep, he thought to himself. That would be better.

A chime, followed by a second, followed by a third, emanated from his laptop.

“You find the answer?” she asked, without turning from where she stood chopping avocado.

“No, that’s my online dating app. It’s never dinged at me three times before. It must have found someone amazing.”

Mrs. Schwartzmann spun around. “Is there picture? Does she have strong arms like she break furniture, maybe for fun?”

“We’ll find out in a minute,” Drew said. “It’s loading now.”

She wiped her hands and shuffled—no, danced—over to the table. “Let us see this wonder woman.”

The picture popped up. Drew stared at it for a long moment.

“What?” she asked, her voice full of sudden concern. “What is the matter? You look like you have seen ghost.”

“It’s not a ghost,” Drew said slowly. “It’s a….”

“Dear boy, what is it?” She sat down opposite, slowly, as if bracing herself to hear tragic news. “What does the computer say?”

“The computer,” Drew replied, but his voice broke before he could finish. He swallowed hard. “Mrs. Schwartzmann, the computer says I’m gay.”

Cameron confronts one of the ghosts of his past on Farlough.

---

The faded sign that stood guard over the Sea Witch hadn’t changed, Cam noted, since he had last seen it, when he was still too young to step inside. He grasped the handle of the oaken door, the cold, thick iron worn smooth by the thirst of generations. Though daylight was just fading, warm air, thick with the rich aroma of pipes being smoked and whisky being nursed, swept over him as he stepped inside.

Mads was at the bar, and he held aloft two pints of deep black porter. Then he turned and walked to the back of the tavern around the other side of the replace. Cam followed, ducking his head under a dark beam laid in a century when people were shorter. Tucked into the side of the chimney was a private nook; once it had held a month’s worth of firewood, but now it was host to two small benches that faced each other over a narrow table. Mads folded himself down until he could slide onto one of the benches, then set the pints on the table.

Cam took up the other bench and shucked off his coat—the heat of the fire emanated through the thick masonry against which he pressed his back warming the little booth. Mads picked up his pint and waited for Cam to do the same. They drank in silence, then set their glasses back down.

Mads stared at the table for a long while.

“I guess none of ‘the lads’ are here?” Cam finally asked. His patience with Mads’s stormy stare was running out.

Without warning Mads reached across the table and grabbed Cam by the neck of his sweater. He yanked roughly until Cam was lifted out of his seat and their foreheads nearly met. They were nose-to-nose, Cam unable even to draw breath.

“Does she know?” he snarled, seething with fury. “Did you tell her?” Cam blinked and tried to pull back, but Mads held him immobile. “Tell me!” Mads roared. The noise level in the pub dropped for a moment as conversations were suspended—obviously, in the hopes of hearing something juicy from the nook no one could see into.

“No, of course I didn’t tell her anything,” Cam whispered, compensating for Mads’s outburst by making his voice almost inaudible. “I didn’t even know she was your wife until you showed up last night.”

Mads released his grip, sending Cam crashing back down into his seat.

“Then why are you here?” Mads spat. Then, as if uninterested in the answer, he picked up his pint and drank fully half of it before bringing it back down with a thump.

“Aunt Hilda,” Cam said quietly.

“Died six months ago. You didn’t seem to notice.”

“She was my only living relative. Of course I noticed. But it wasn’t until two weeks ago that her will was read and I got her instructions to come here.”

“Couldn’t be bothered to come here just because she died? Leaving an entire island mourning her loss? A loss that should have been yours too, if you’d cared a bit about her.”

Cam, chastened despite his anger at being berated so viciously, looked at his hands. “You don’t know anything about me,” he said quietly.

Mads scoffed dismissively. “That’s a true word.” He finished his pint in a gulp.

Cam could take no more. He glared across the table. “You were the one who pushed me away.” His voice quavered with anger and pain and loss.

Mads’s eyes widened while his brow darkened. “You think that’s what happened, do you? Is that right?” His voice became a low growl. “Fuck you.”

Cam sat back and studied the man he once thought he knew better than anyone else in the world—and who he thought knew him too. Now it was clear the gulf between them was larger than a table, wider than a dozen years. “Look, if all you’re worried about is whether I’m going to tell her about us—about whatever happened between us—you can just go now. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

Mads stared hard at him, wheels turning in his head behind the deep brown eyes.

“What more do you want from me?” Cam said, his voice rising as anger began to tighten his throat. “I’m not going to tell anyone you broke my heart, okay?”

Mads startled as if he’d been slapped but still said nothing.

“What do you fucking want?” Cam exploded, and again the pub fell quiet around them. But he was too far gone in his sorrow and rage to stop now. He leaned over the table, his voice a hushed torrent of outrage. “I’m not going to tell anyone that you broke my heart and it’s stayed broken. That I’ve never had a relationship that lasted as long as those summers here with you. You broke my heart, Mads, and you fucking broke me. You tell me why I’d want anyone knowing that. You knowing it is bad enough, but now you do. Happy?”

“I…,” Mads began but seemed to have no idea what would come next. He looked around as if for a sign of some kind, a bit of divine guidance as to what to do or say, but apparently none was forthcoming. He grabbed his coat and slid out of the booth. He’d taken two or three steps when he stopped, then turned back. Walking back to the table, he paused for a moment.

Cam looked up at him, tears welling in his eyes.

Mads pulled some bills out of his pocket and tossed them on the table. Then he turned and left.

Cam, alone, stared at his glass for a long time, and despite the repeated, polite offers of the tavern keeper to bring him a cold one, he emptied it slowly, uninterested in both the taste of the alcohol and its effect. He finished it only because something needed to be finished. Whatever it was he’d had with Mads would, apparently, never be. Or maybe it was finished before they’d begun it.

The first competition on the show requires the contestants to fight as gladiators, but in silver body paint rather than armor. Riley finds the process of getting suited up more challenging than he had expected.

---

This wasn’t exactly the Olympics.

The ostensible purpose of the competition at the heart of the show was to allow the bachelorette to find her champion, the man who was strongest, fastest, most capable. She would, in theory, see the men at their best, and be able then to choose the one who excelled in those manly arts most dear to her.

The real purpose of the ridiculous weekly challenges was to display the bachelors—or rather, their bodies—to the audience, who tuned in to discover how the contestants would be rendered soaking wet, shirtless, or both.

Riley knew this going in, of course, which was one of the reasons he had been hitting the gym so hard over the last several months. He knew that his survival, particularly in the early weeks, was more a measure of how he seduced the camera rather than the bachelorette.

The bachelors were bused to the site of their first challenge less than twenty-four hours after their arrival at the house. They had been given no clue as to the exercise the producers had contrived for them to battle through, and the chatter on the bus was filled with idle, and increasingly silly, speculation. Riley sat at the front of the bus and stared out the window, glad that the seat next to him was occupied by one of the show’s handlers rather than one of the brainless bachelor herd. He had hoped to get a glimpse of the clipboard on the young man’s lap, but it was covered securely by a bright-red plastic sheet with “TOP SECRET” emblazoned across it. He had to chuckle to himself at how seriously they all took this charade of “reality.”

The bus arrived at an imposing block of a building, completely without identifying marks, and waited while a large door rolled up so that the bus could enter. It came to a stop just inside the building and shuddered to a halt. Eager to get going, the men stood and nudged into the aisle, and then fell quiet when the bachelor wrangler next to Riley stood and called for their attention.

“Welcome to the first challenge, gentlemen. Follow me, please.” He led the way down the steps, with Riley right behind.

They were in a cavernous, warehouse-like space. The only structure Riley could see was a scaffolded cube about the size of a basketball court and some bleachers. He was unable to discern enough through the slats of the scaffold to get a sense of what was in the middle. Off to the side of the structure was a brightly lit area where some staffers awaited their arrival. The handler, reaching this point, turned and waited for the men to gather.

“Gentlemen, this is where you will face your first challenge. Or rather, this is where you will first challenge one another.”

Riley looked instinctively side to side—all the men did, which was probably what the producers intended. Aggressive glances played well on the teasers for the episode.

“Our theme this season will be ‘Ages of Romance,’ and each week’s challenge will take place in a different time and place. Today, you will compete to be our bachelorette’s knight in shining armor. It’s the age of chivalry, gentlemen, so get ready to joust for the hand of your lady fair.”

“Wait, we’re going to be wearing armor?” Riley heard one of the others ask.

“Glad you asked,” rejoined the handler. “You’ll be shining all right, but you won’t be wearing armor. To tell you about that part is Alana—she and her team will get you ready for the contest. Alana?”

The towering Amazon of a makeup artist stepped forward. “All right, listen up.” The bachelors fell silent. “My team is going to turn you into silver-plated knights for the competition. This,” she said as she pulled a parcel out from behind her back, “is what you will be wearing.” She held up a pair of boy-shorts in gleaming silver.

“That’s it?” came a worried voice from somewhere in the rear of the pack.

“Oh, no, of course not!” Alana assured him. “You’ll also be wearing silver body paint. Now, each of you will go with one of my artists, and we’ll get you sorted.” Conjured by her words, a team of rail-thin minions swept into view from behind her. They were exactly what Riley expected—tall, willowy girls with razor-sharp multi-colored hair and throat tattoos, and fast-walking, fast-talking boys with frenetic hand gestures. Each bachelor was claimed by a makeup artist. Riley had hoped for one of several of the friendlier-looking cosmetistas as they hurried toward him, but each veered at the last second and laid claim to his competition. He started to wonder whether he really presented so much of a makeup challenge that no one wanted to be saddled with him.

Finally, when the voluble flock had flown by, he was approached by one of the production crew—at least that was what he assumed, given the young man’s appearance. He was wearing worn jeans, a tight baseball jersey, and a cap that sat backward on his head. Riley looked at him expectantly, eager to find out what would happen while he waited for a makeup artist to arrive.

“So, you belong to me,” the young man said, his voice a Jersey-tinged growl, his mouth twisted with either a snarl or a wry grin—Riley wasn’t certain. “C’mon.” He turned and walked toward the last of the makeup stations.

“Who is…. I mean, where…?” Riley, confused, gave up trying to formulate the right question and just followed along.

They reached the last makeup mirror in the row and came to a stop.

“Name’s Wilbur,” the young man said, extending his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I’m Riley.” The men shook hands. “So this is where I’ll wait?”

“Wait? For what?”

“For someone to come do… whatever makeup thing needs to be… done?” Riley grew tentative when he saw no glimmer of understanding on Wilbur’s face.

“I’m your guy,” Wilbur said with a professional smile. “Now, here’s what we’re going to do—”

“I’m sorry, did you say that you’re the makeup artist?”

“Yeah. Problem?”

“Um, no, no problem. You’re just not—”

“Not the makeup artist type, right? Yeah, I get that a lot. Now, here’s what you need to wear. Get into that, and then we’ll start on the body makeup.” Wilbur handed Riley a pair of silver shorts that looked somehow even smaller than the ones Alana had brandished moments ago.

Riley studied the thin, shiny shorts. “Where do I change?”

Wilbur laughed. “How about right here, right now, so we can get you ready? They aren’t going to hold the show while you try to find a changing room in the junior miss department.” He shook his head and started opening his makeup cases.

A quick glance around the area proved Wilbur correct—all around him Riley could see his competition stripping off and donning the tiny silver briefs. Realizing that he was gazing out over a half-dozen pale mooning asses, he turned abruptly back to Wilbur, who gave an impatient shake of his head at the delay in wardrobe.

Riley began unbuttoning his shirt, but it was brand-new and rather stiff of placket, which caused his nervous fingers considerable difficulty.

“Lemme,” Wilbur grunted, slapping Riley’s hands away. “You’re gettin’ nowhere with those sausage fingers.”

Shocked, Riley looked down at his hands. His fingers bore no objective resemblance to sausages. He mulled this insult for a moment, and then was distracted from his mulling by the feel of Wilbur’s agile progress in unbuttoning. He had reached the lowest button he could without—and then Riley felt a yank as Wilbur pulled his shirt out of his pants and finished the job.

“There. Can you take it from here, chief, or should I continue?” Only the briefest twitch in the corner of Wilbur’s mouth telegraphed that he was having a bit of fun with his awkward bachelor.

“No, I’ve got it,” Riley managed to mumble, and he proceeded with his undressing while Wilbur opened a distressingly large jar of sparkling silver paste.

Riley carefully draped his shirt, and then his pants, over the back of a chair that sat next to the makeup station. He slipped off his socks and then, ashamed at his blushing, slid off his boxer briefs as well. He grabbed up the silver boy-shorts, not so quickly as to come across as ashamed of his body, but not so leisurely as to seem immodest. He was overthinking this, he knew, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He slid the paper-thin, stretchy briefs into place.

“Nice job there, chief,” said Wilbur. “Wasn’t sure you were gonna be able to park a limo in that one-car garage.”

Riley gaped, wordless.

“Hey, lighten up! Most guys don’t mind a compliment on the junk.” Wilbur’s smile was undaunted by Riley’s fishlike speechlessness. “Let’s get the glitter party started,” he said, motioning Riley to step closer.

Riley took two small strides and found himself in front of the mirror. A quick scan up and down proved two things: his hard work in the gym had paid off, and Wilbur kind of had a point about the logistics of these silver briefs. They looked to be at capacity or beyond.

Wilbur dipped his sponge into the jar of silver and approached Riley with it. He stopped short, however. “Hey, mind if we clean up a little here before we silver-plate you?”

“What? I took a shower this morning,” protested Riley.

“No, you’re fine. It’s just that you have some fine hair on your chest—you can hardly see it, but it’s going to look clumpy when the makeup goes on. Can we just…?” Wilbur made a rapid downward stroking motion across Riley’s chest.

“You want to shave my chest?”

“Trust me, chief. It’ll look much better.”

“Uh, okay,” stumbled Riley. This was getting really weird really quickly.

“Awesome.” Wilbur turned and grabbed up a can of shaving cream and squirted some into his palm. He rubbed the foam onto both hands and stepped directly in front of Riley. “Have you ever shaved your chest?”

Riley shook his head.

“Nothing to worry about, I do this all the time,” Wilbur said as he began to smooth the cream onto Riley’s chest.

“It’s… warm,” Riley said, surprised.

“Yep. It’s my own formula,” he replied as he spread the warm foam across Riley’s pectorals and in between. “It works really well for location shoots where you don’t have hot water.”

“It feels amazing,” Riley was shocked to hear himself say. The unexpected warmth on his chest was like being wrapped in a soft blanket.

“It’s a pretty basic exothermic reaction,” Wilbur replied modestly. “I like to put my chemistry degree to good use once in a while.” He spread the warm foam down to Riley’s abs, then stepped back to survey his work. “Now, if we do the chest, we should probably do your trail as well,” he mused, cocking his head to one side.

“My… trail?”

Wilbur’s head snapped back upright. “Your treasure trail, chief. The line of hair that runs between your navel and the top of your pubes? It’s going to get gummed up with silver if we leave it. You okay for me to keep going down?”

“Uh, sure, I guess….” Riley’s voice trailed off. He was so far out of his comfort zone that he hardly felt he was in his body at all.

“Great. Here we go.” Wilbur squirted another dollop of cream into his hands and ran them down Riley’s lower belly. “Let’s make sure we get it all,” he said, looking Riley right in the eye as he tugged down on the silver briefs, lowering them an inch or so.

Riley’s disembodied confusion abruptly gave way to a feeling of being very much in his body, a body that was now being touched quite intimately by another man.

“And… done!” Wilbur said suddenly, as if he had sensed Riley’s panic. He wiped his hands on a towel, and reached for his razor.

“You use a straight razor?” Riley asked, his voice quavering. He cleared his throat, attempting to cough the girlishness out of it. “I mean, I’ve never used one of those.”

“I prefer my tools straight,” Wilbur said, winking.

Riley laughed in confusion. What the hell was that supposed to mean? But he had no time to analyze as Wilbur was approaching with the gleaming instrument.

“Now, shaving with a straight razor is a little different from using one of those pussy safety things. As long as we keep the tension on your skin, you’ll get a much smoother shave, and there’s really no danger.” He looked into Riley’s eyes again, with that strong, clear gaze. “I’ve never had a client bleed out—never even nicked one.” He must have read Riley’s uncertainty. “Trust me?”

Riley’s mind was a whirl. Not knowing what else to do, he nodded. And then he closed his eyes.

The first thing he felt was Wilbur’s hand, pressing on the top of his right pectoral. He jolted, eyes wide, startled by the firm pressure on his chest.

“Dude, I haven’t even started yet,” Wilbur said softly.

“Sorry. I guess I’m just a little nervous.”

“I know. This whole TV thing has got to be stressful. But just take a deep breath and relax. You’re in good hands,” he murmured with a smile.

Riley nodded and then took the recommended deep breath and closed his eyes.

“I’m going in,” Wilbur said in a hearty voice, clearly meant to buck up his agitated subject.

Then the razor made contact, just below the spot where the hand maintained its firm pressure, and it glided down smoothly, just to one side of Riley’s nipple. The touch of the blade was so light that he hardly felt it. Then Wilbur’s hand slid over a bit, and the blade swept down again, this time to the other side of his nipple. He looked down, and saw, to his mortification, that his nipple was standing erect—the light sweeping motion of the blade had excited it somehow.

“You’re doing great,” Wilbur murmured, his eyes locking on Riley’s for a moment and then returning to his work.

Riley closed his eyes again, wishing for this to just be over.

Wilbur, having slicked Riley’s right pectoral, moved to the left and repeated his gentle swipes with the razor. Then he worked down the valley between them, a cleft made deeper by Riley’s weight-lifting regimen of the last six months. He gently denuded the abs as well, tensioning the skin as he glided the razor over the ridges of stomach muscle. He paused when he reached Riley’s navel.

“You good?” he asked.

Riley opened his eyes, having—despite his anxiety—been caught up in the feeling of Wilbur’s gentle touch. He was immediately embarrassed, if not precisely sure why. “Yeah, I’m good. Actually, you’re good—you’re amazing with that blade.”

“Damn right. Now we’re going to take care of the south forty. Almost done, chief.” Wilbur knelt down in front of Riley, a posture that instantly doubled Riley’s anxiety. As intensely personal as the shaving had been, having the other man kneel before him was beyond anything Riley had ever imagined.

Wilbur laid his hand over Riley’s navel and pressed gently to tension the skin below it. Riley felt a flush of warmth, which flummoxed him so that he welcomed the distracting terror of seeing the blade approach his vulnerable lower belly. He sucked in a breath, causing Wilbur to look up at him, his blue eyes framed by kind wrinkles at the corners as he grinned conspiratorially.

“Ready?” Wilbur asked, his voice low and soft.

Riley tried to respond, but his mouth was dry. He gave up and just nodded.

Wilbur winked at him and then looked to the job at hand.

Riley felt the warm breath brush across his skin as the other man laid his blade onto the taut lower abdomen and then slid, slowly and gently, down and down and down. The blade stopped only an inch from the base of Riley’s manhood, close enough that Riley was suddenly aware of nothing else in the world other than his cock and this man’s proximity to it.

Wilbur repeated the motion twice, completely clearing the trail of fine hair that had connected Riley’s navel to the root of his penis. He then reached for a towel to finish up.

“Now we’ll just wipe up, and we can get to turning you into the Tin Man,” cracked Wilbur as he touched the towel to Riley’s lower abs.

“Oh, that’s—warm,” exhaled Riley, in a voice that was almost a moan.

“The portable towel warmer is one of the greatest inventions known to man,” Wilbur replied, gently swabbing the remains of the shaving cream off Riley’s smooth skin.

In spite of himself, Riley closed his eyes and let the warm, gently massaging touch of Wilbur’s careful ministrations wash over him. Some part of him knew he was enjoying this far too much, but he couldn’t help it—or just didn’t care anymore.

“And then a light soother to keep the makeup from irritating your skin,” Wilbur said, in a voice so soft that it didn’t disrupt Riley’s relaxed state. Then Wilbur’s hands were back, and there was no thick cream this time, no warm towel—nothing between the two men but a fine slick lotion. His hands swept over Riley’s muscled chest, down the cleft between his abs, down to the border marked by the silver fabric, and then—just for an instant—beyond. Wilbur’s fingertips breached the elastic waistband, only for a fraction of a second, but the touch—the warmth of it, the violation of it—shot through Riley like an electric current.

Riley felt the surge of blood to his cock, a feeling that was a part of his essential manhood, of every man’s identity, but one that had never—never in his life—been invoked by the touch of another man. He stood in breathless panic, willing his erection to halt its progress, knowing that he was powerless to stop it.

Wilbur seemed not to have noticed. He finished his last sweep of Riley’s shaved region, and turned back to his case to wipe his hands and pick up the silver makeup. But when he turned back, his eyes immediately darted to Riley’s distended briefs. He looked up at Riley’s face, at Riley’s mortified, breathless expression.

“Damn, it’s not enough that you are handsome and built like a brick shithouse. Ya gotta have a lady-killer down there too, huh? Shit, man, I’d give anything to be you, just for a day.” Wilbur’s eyes crinkled with good-natured laughter, and he shook his head. “Now, hold still, chief. This is gonna be painless but tedious.” He stepped behind Riley and began daubing the metallic paste on his back.

Riley looked up and saw them in the mirror: himself with the recently denuded chest, and behind him the artist at work, who seemed to care not a bit about the tent at Riley’s crotch. He closed his eyes and tried to think of the most boring thing he could imagine, desperate to interrupt his penis in its inflation.

“So, what do you do, when you’re not putting yourself out on the meat market like this?” Wilbur asked, his eyes focused on the canvas of Riley’s back, but glancing up every few moments to make eye contact in the mirror.

“Boring stuff. I work for an insurance company. It’s not as glamorous as what you do, obviously.”

Wilbur snorted. “Yeah, right. Look at me, I’m a frickin’ rock star!” He laughed and shook his head.

“But it must be interesting work,” Riley continued, desperate to keep the conversation going, hoping to bore his erection into submission. He thought he could feel its pulse slackening already.

“I thought it would be—that’s why I dropped chemistry. Went into special effects makeup—thought aliens and monsters were my calling. Heh.” He snorted again. “That dream lasted about a week—not a job to be had in that. I consoled myself by taking gigs doing fashion makeup. I figured I could work the Victoria’s Secret show, that kind of thing. So I did that for a while.”

“That must have been exciting, right?”

“Again, for about a week. Then I found out two things: first, lingerie models only know about a dozen words, and all of them have to do with themselves. Second, they don’t date the makeup guy.” Wilbur stood back from Riley for a moment, cocking his head. “All right, I’m gonna move to your side now—can you lift your left arm? Thanks.” He resumed daubing in this new terrain.

“So the supermodels turned you down, huh?” Riley had finally felt the constriction in his shiny briefs relenting, and he wanted to keep Wilbur talking as long as he could.

“Oh yeah. At first I thought it was because they’d never met a straight makeup artist before, but the novelty apparently never wore off. Blue balls every frickin’ night, my friend. Let me set the scene for you: the models have about thirty seconds to change between looks, and to get touched up. They would come running toward me in those ridiculous heels, melons bouncing”—here he hopped up and down, miming wildly heaving breasts—“throwing off negligées, and demanding that I blot the sweat from their cleavage while they changed panties. Holy hell, man, how was I supposed to deal with that?” He stepped back again, appraising his work. “Okay, done with the left—lift your right for me?” Wilbur moved over and began daubing again.

The mention of the naked and demanding Victoria’s Secret models had instantly put Riley’s erection elimination plan off track—he was on the rise again, dammit.

“There was this one model—every time I patched her up between outfits, her nipples would brush against my arm. You know, like this?” He ran his hand down Riley’s arm, barely touching his skin. “I thought she was sending me a message, right? So at the end of the show I ask her out, and she hauls back and slaps me. A good clean hit, right on the jaw. That was my last fashion show, and I didn’t really have any other job opportunities. I heard about Alana from a buddy and hit her up for a job. She gets the weirdest gigs, but they pay well. And just look at this glamour—right?” He was chuckling as he finished Riley’s right side.

“Yeah, it sure feels glamorous.” Riley could not yet see the silvering of his body, as Wilbur hadn’t started on his chest. But he was about to, and no matter how decorous he had been to this point, he could hardly ignore Riley’s still-growing erection, which threatened to emerge from its silvery confines any second.

“You’re tellin’ me. Now I’m gonna do your chest, okay? We’ll cover the big areas, then come back for the detail work.” He started energetically stroking Riley’s chest with the makeup sponge, making big loopy swirls of silver. The pasty pancake substance was cool on his skin, and his nipples responded by perking up again, pointing directly at Wilbur. Ever the professional, he simply daubed a little extra on each point of flesh and kept moving.

Soon Riley’s chest was as silver as the rest of his upper body.

“All right, now the legs,” Wilbur said jauntily.

“You aren’t going to take the blade to my legs, are you?”

“No! First, your legs are pretty uniform in terms of hair, unlike your chest. Second, with muscles like these—what are you, a cyclist?—shaving them will leave you looking more Angelina Jolie than shining armor knight.”

“Gee, thanks,” Riley muttered.

“Hey, if I had legs like yours, I’d be wearing a silver bikini every frickin’ day!” He knelt down again in front of Riley, his face mere inches from the now hard and throbbing manhood obscured by the silver fabric.

Riley was in agony. His tumescence would have been awkward enough in front of a gay makeup artist, but knowing that Wilbur was straight made it creepy as well as embarrassing. He tried to think about anything other than being here, but when he closed his eyes he was backstage at the Victoria’s Secret show and bouncing melons filled his mental vision. He held his breath and willed the blood to flow out of his loins. After a couple of minutes of concentration, he had made—or at least convinced himself he had made—some progress.

“All right, now we’re going to do the edges, give you a nice finish.” Wilbur stood, took up a small makeup brush, and dabbed it into the jar of silver. “Right hand,” he ordered.

Riley held out his right hand, as instructed. He was so relieved that Wilbur was off his knees that he would do anything he was asked.

With the steady hand of a surgeon, Wilbur traced a line around Riley’s wrist, neatly bordering the silver body paint. When he had finished, it looked uncannily like the hem of a sleeve.

“And the left,” Wilbur said, his brow still furrowed with concentration. Riley complied. Soon the left matched the right, and the cuffs were finished. “Okay, now we can do the neck. I’ll start in the back.”

Wilbur disappeared behind Riley, but the slow, steady sweep of his brush made his presence known.

“I made the neck opening pretty wide,” he said, appraising his work. “It really shows off those broad shoulders of yours.”

Riley could see himself blushing in the mirror.

Wilbur came around to the front again, and started work on the neckline.

Riley could smell Wilbur’s minty breath as he exhaled slowly, evenly. His hand traced along Riley’s upper chest, the brush tickling a little, leaving goose bumps in its wake as it swept over the top of his chest. Riley closed his eyes, trying to imagine himself somewhere—anywhere—else.

“And… good,” Wilber announced, stepping back to check his work. He closed one eye, tipped his head. “You know,” he mused, “they said we’re just supposed to paint you silver, but I don’t think it would really be against the rules if we….”

“What? If we what?” Riley blurted, panic creeping into his voice.

“Hang on. Just let me….” Wilbur picked up a second jar of silver paint, then what looked like a tube of oil paint. He squeezed a dollop of purest black into the silver, and stirred it briskly with a wooden stick. The silver tinged ever so slightly darker. “There,” he announced.

“Where… what?” Riley’s agitated voice grew a little louder.

Wilbur looked him in the eye. “Silver paint looks shiny, but it covers over everything—all the detail of your body is lost. Now, that’s great if you have moles or freckles, which you don’t, but not so good if the detail that’s lost is, for example, your super-ripped ab muscles.” He tipped his head toward Riley’s belly.

Riley looked in the mirror and saw immediately what Wilbur meant. His belly was flat. Most men, of course, would be happy to have a flat abdomen, but Riley had worked really hard to carve out six hard plates of muscle—none of which could be seen through the paint. He nodded.

“Now, if we had time, I would do this with an airbrush, but since we’ve got about five minutes, I’m just going to wing it, okay?”

Riley nodded again. He wasn’t sure what Wilbur meant by “winging it,” but he had come to trust the other man and decided to let him do what he wanted.

Wilbur knelt in front of Riley again. Riley immediately felt the heat rising in his chest. He started to consider the possibility that he was getting sick or that something at breakfast had disagreed with him.

“I’m just going to shade underneath each muscle—a little shadow to make your abs pop.” He swirled his finger in the jar of dark silver paint and then swept it, ever so lightly, across Riley’s belly. He then blended the streak he had made with his other fingers, a soft flurry of touch that softened and smoothed the line into the appearance of shadow.

Riley was in agony. Every touch brought a new wave of chills crashing over his body. He was beyond goose bumps now—he was starting to quiver. It had been nearly a year since he had been touched, by anyone, and now he was being tickled by another man, in public, while covered in silver paint.

A flashback popped up in his mind: once he had gone to a massage appointment and his usual therapist, a taciturn Swedish woman with hands that could snap tree branches, was out for the day. There was another therapist—a man Riley’s age—but he had cancelled his appointment rather than spend an hour getting a rubdown from a man. He wanted nothing to do with that kind of intimacy. Now he was boning up at Wilbur’s touch. The fucked-upness of his life was becoming painfully clear to him.

“Done.” Wilbur stepped back and smiled broadly. “Fuck,” he huffed, smiling broadly, “I’d do you right now, and no shit.” He gave a deep, rumbling laugh and stowed his brush. Just a guy being a guy.

Riley tried to reply, but no words would come and he could only croak.

“Ten minutes, artists!” boomed a voice on a PA system. It echoed through the cavernous space. “Ten minutes!”

Wilbur grabbed up the jar of silver paint and the sponge, and hurried back to Riley. “Just need to tuck the silver into your shorts,” he said. “I saved this for last so that we didn’t get smearing while I worked on the other parts.” He knelt at Riley’s side, and began daubing the silver high on his thighs. “Hey, can you hike up your shorts a bit so I can get the paint up under?”

Riley hooked his fingers under the elastic around the leg holes, and pulled up.

“Excellent.” Daub daub daub. Wilbur scooted quickly from one side to the other, and repeated his daubing flurry. “Now, I’m gonna get your back,” he said, now short of breath from his scurrying.

Riley felt the waistband of his briefs tugged forcefully down, and felt cool air on the top of his buttocks.

“Jesus, man, you have got it goin’ on back here too,” cracked Wilbur as he worked silver paint into the rounded muscle and down in between. “These things don’t give a millimeter, even when I’m pushin’ on ’em!”

Riley was relieved when the waistband slipped back into place. Finally, he would be able to get away from this bizarre thing they were doing.

“One more spot, and you’re good to gladiate!” Wilbur shuffled around Riley to the front, where he did the same as he had done at the back. He gave a good yank and the waistband pulled down, right to the root of Riley’s cock.

Panic shot through Riley, as time came to a sudden and sickening halt. With Wilbur’s every touch Riley felt his cock surge, until it was throbbing in time with the makeup artist’s frantic motions. He could feel the thin fabric tightening as his penis stretched farther toward his hip.

“And we’re just about—Oh, shit! Dude!” Wilbur exclaimed as Riley’s cock sprang free of the silvery confines it had been wedged into.

“Oh, fuck—I don’t know what—” Riley blurted. He could hardly catch his breath—the room was starting to spin around him. “I’m sorry,” he managed to mutter, the taste of breakfast surging into his mouth.

Wilbur looked up at him. “Dude, chill. You don’t need to apologize. It happens. But I don’t know how we’re going to get you back into this very tight package.” He stood up but stayed just inches from Riley, blocking the sight of the rogue erection from the rest of the room.

“Maybe they have a larger size?”

“They do, but that doesn’t do us any good right now. Taking these off would smear the paint right off your legs—it’d be a mess.”

“Oh, fuck! I’m going to have to drop out. I can’t go out there with this—”

“Hold on there, chief. My momma didn’t raise a quitter. We just gotta get rid of this thing.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“Can you think about baseball or something? Car crashes? The stock market?”

“I was doing that the whole time you’ve been working on me. This is how much it’s helped,” Riley snapped, with a head-tip down to his crotch.

A grin tugged at the corner of Wilbur’s mouth. “I did that?”

Riley sighed. “Well, I’m probably just anxious about this competition thing, but having your hands all over me didn’t exactly help matters.”

Wilbur chuckled. “Awesome.” He suddenly regained his serious composure when he saw Riley’s stern expression. “I think there’s only one thing that’s going to help.”

“What’s that—you have some ice or something?”

“No, that would be a drippy mess.” He looked right into Riley’s eyes. “You’re going to have to tug one out, chief. It’s the only way.”

“What the fuck?”

Wilbur reached back and grabbed a towel. He held it up around the front and sides of Riley’s body, not touching his skin but close enough to keep anyone from seeing what was going on under it. “You’re covered. Now go!” he said urgently, looking from side to side.

The other silvery bachelors were starting to drift over to the edge of the structure, where the competition would shortly begin.

“I can’t. This is too weird.”

“Look, do you want to win this thing, or flame out before it starts?” Wilbur’s voice was gruff and low. “Get to it, man!”

Riley couldn’t think straight anymore, and in the absence of any other notion of what to do, he did what Wilbur told him to. He reached down into the towel and wrapped his hand around his inexplicably still rock-hard cock. But the insanity of what he was doing stopped him there. He couldn’t move.

“What, you doing some kind of tantric isometric thing?” Wilbur said with a glance down into the towel. “Get moving!” He looked quickly around the room, then back to Riley. “Don’t make me come in there!” he said, the sly grin reappearing on his stubbled face.

“Shit,” Riley grunted, and willed his hand to start moving. It slid tentatively along his penis, which responded by producing a drop of fluid from its tip. Riley may have felt completely lost, but his cock was sure of what it wanted.

Riley had never in his life done this with another person watching him, and he had certainly never done it in a room with a hundred other people. As he quickened his pace, though, he began to hope that his problem would soon be behind him, and he could still compete.

Wilbur, seeming to sense how he might help, turned back to Riley after completing another sweep of the room. “You know that model I was telling you about earlier—the one who always brushed her nipples on my arm? Well, that wasn’t all she did. This one time, during a break in the runway show, she disappears. Just disappears. Supposed to be in my chair so I can switch to evening makeup, and she’s gone. So I go look for her—high and low, everywhere—and finally when I opened the janitor’s closet, there she is with another of the models. They are going at it—hard. All of that work I did on her lips, and she’s got them locked on this other woman’s tits, her fingers rubbing away between her legs. Moaning and groaning like there’s no tomorrow. Then they see me looking, so they start kissing and pressing their boobs together and sliding up and down on each other’s thighs. They start shaking like they’re having a month’s worth of orgasms, and I just close the door and walk away.”

Riley closed his eyes to better focus on the writhing super-lesbians. Another drop of precum slid from his cock, allowing his hand to slide more smoothly along its length.

“Then I head for the bathroom, because now I can’t even walk straight I’m so hard. I close the door, whip it out, and just stand there, not caring who can hear me, not caring who’s in the next stall or what they think I’m doing, and I start beating my cock. Like it owes me money. It was so fucked up, so dirty, I just about shot as soon as I started.”

“Yeah?” breathed Riley, his pulse quickening.

“I was hard as a fuckin’ pipe, and it took about thirty seconds before I could feel it.”

“Feel… what…?” Riley’s voice was a ragged whisper, his eyes wide.

“Feel my fuckin’ balls start to hitch up, gettin’ ready….”

“Ohh…,” Riley moaned.

“Gettin’ ready to shoot, man, shoot my shit all over the place.” Wilbur was looking right into Riley’s eyes. “Fuckin’ pump it out. Stroke it… stroke it… stroke it,” Wilbur huffed out his filthy chant, urging Riley on.

Riley couldn’t speak, but neither could he look away. His hand was a blur of slippery motion.

“I came harder than I ever had in my life.” He was leaning into Riley now, his lips against Riley’s ear. “I just fuckin’ blew that load all over the place, rubbed it until I was dry, emptied out. I came and came and came.” Wilbur’s words were hot and moist in Riley’s ear.

Riley took a sharp breath, and froze. Then he felt it tear through him, this unwanted but desperately needed release, and his cock began wildly spurting. Riley was swept away, out of the bizarre competition—he was wrapped in the serene glow of orgasm.

“Got it!” Wilbur said, jarring Riley out of his ecstatic suspension.

Riley felt the other man’s hand grasp the head of his cock and squeeze. Wilbur had gathered up a handful of the towel fabric, and was holding it firmly around the tip of Riley’s penis as semen blasted out of it. He held on, his grip strong, until the flow of semen trailed off.

Riley was shocked. He had never been touched by a man in any of the ways that Wilbur had been touching him this morning, and certainly never as he was being touched now. His eyes wide with mortification, he turned to look at the other man’s face, and saw his eyebrows were peaked, his mouth was open, and he was drawing a ragged breath as if he were the one in the throes of this unwanted but undeniable storm of pleasure. Riley closed his eyes and looked away.

“Just protecting the paint job,” Wilbur whispered into Riley’s ear. “No homo,” he added, and Riley could see a grin as he pulled back.

With shaking hands Riley tucked his penis back into the silvery briefs, and Wilbur tossed the towel, now bearing Riley’s semen, off to the side of the makeup station. In the mirror Riley could see that his briefs, though still tightly packed, were no longer obscenely stretched.

“Looks good to go, big guy,” Wilbur said, a broad smile on his face.

“Yeah. Uh… thanks.” Riley was trying hard to catch his breath. “I really… owe you one,” he fumbled.

“No worries. Just go win this thing, okay?”

Riley nodded, and turned to go. He stopped and turned back.

“And just for the record,” he said to Wilbur, “I’m not… you know.”

A wry grin spread across Wilbur’s face, lit by a genuine warmth. “I know you’re not gay—you’re just a guy with a superhero cock who is man enough to deal with it.”

Riley surprised himself with a laugh, a release of tension in the face of how fucked up the whole thing was. Maybe it was going to be okay. He nodded his thanks to Wilbur and turned to face the competition.

Brandt’s oldest brother, Liam, is the best man. He teams up with Bryce to plan the bachelors party and, as you can imagine, he finds the fabulous shop boy a little… hard to manage. This is their first conversation.

---

“Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Bryce.”

“Oh, the pleasure is all mine. I can hardly believe I’m talking with the original Brandt boy. You sound even more muscular than Ethan, if that’s possible.”

“I’m afraid it must be a bad connection. Ethan’s the looker in the family.”

“We shall see, we shall see. Now, how can I help with this bachelors party? It’s the first one I’ve ever been asked to participate in, and am I correct in understanding that it’s to be an all-male affair? Because then I can offer you a wealth of experience, both as a partygoer and as a service professional. In fact, some of the parties I have serviced have asked me to make it a regular thing, which is quite a compliment, given the competition in that area from each new crop of muscly country boys who land on our shores, eager to parlay their corn-fed charm into G-strings packed with fives and tens. My, my….” Bryce took a steadying breath. “Now, where were we?”

“I… actually have no idea.” Liam took his own steadying breath. “Well, when I talked with Ethan last weekend about the party, he was very concerned that we come up with a plan all the guests would be comfortable with.”

“You have come to the right man. I can be very comforting.”

“Here’s the issue, Bryce. Not all of the attendees are gay.”

“I have never been one to judge people on their shortcomings.”

“Ah, yes. That’s… commendable. But Ethan’s primary concern was that since a large number of the guys are straight, whatever we plan for the party should be something they will enjoy. But we don’t want to make the gay ones uncomfortable either.”

“Now, when you say straight, do you mean latent, in denial, or simply never tried it?”

“Never tried what?”

“Being gay, honey,” Bryce cried.

“Um… I guess what I mean is that they only have relationships with women.”

“Everybody has relationships with women. You can’t really avoid it—they’re everywhere.”

“I mean they have intimate relationships with women.”

“Mm-hmm, I see,” Bryce said thoughtfully. “Well, again, I’m not going to judge people for bad decisions they made in the past.”

“But these are guys who are in relationships with women right now. Some of them are married to women.”

“So you’re saying we need to be sure there are no cameras at the party. Very prudent of you. I’ll take care of the frisking myself, unless you prefer to have someone in uniform do it. Oh, I have just the man for you—though he can be alarmingly quick with the handcuffs. We’ll just tell him to keep his nightstick to himself.”

Liam sighed. “Bryce, I think you’re missing the point. About half the guests at this party don’t have sex with men. Never have, never will.”

Bryce’s laughter overwhelmed the phone connection. “And I suppose they’ll be coming to the party in pumpkin coaches? Your little brother is a hoot, but you, sir, are hilarious!”

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Liam said, slowly.

“And you’re modest too. What a charmer.” Bryce took a breath, wiping the tears of hilarity from his eyes. “We both know that straight guys don’t actually exist.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh, nothing to be sorry about. It’s just not what nature intended.”

“I don’t follow—”

“If men were not intended to have sex with each other, then why do locker rooms exist? And the British Navy? What need would we possibly have for football or the priesthood, except as foreplay? Oh, the very idea!”

“Bryce, I don’t know how to break it to you, but straight men actually exist.”

“Oh, when you make a joke, you commit. That’s wonderful. All right, I will play along. Now, these straight men you are talking about, you say they’ve never had sex with a man, and don’t intend to?”

“That’s right.”

“So they’ve never touched another man intimately? Not in high school, when the hormones are raging? Or in college, when they’re thrown together in dorm rooms and forced to spend every moment with other men, even in the showers? You’re telling me that there are men out there who have never touched, kissed, or had a sexual thought about another man, ever, in their entire lives?”

“Well, I’m sure there are men out there who—”

“What about you, Mr. Big Brother Brandt? What about you? Can you tell me in all honesty that you have never laid a finger on your fellow man?”

Liam was silent for a moment.

“I don’t mean to pry,” Bryce continued, “and though I would guard your privacy with my very life, you are under no obligation to tell me any personal details. But I would simply ask you to reflect on whether your own life has been as straight as you claim the men at this party will be.”

Liam’s silence continued a little longer. “Well… I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” There was a sound over the line of a door being closed. “But there was a time in high school when a couple of buddies and I… well, there was some touching. Just the once, though.”

“Ah, just as I had predicted. Thank you for trusting me with that information, which I shall hold in strictest confidence—especially tonight when I am in the bath. But let’s return to your definition of straightness. For reference, I believe you said it involved men who ‘never have, and never will’ have sex with another man. Does that fit your situation?”

Again, a pause on Liam’s side. “I don’t know that I would call that one awkward grope sex.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t sexual, then. You were, perhaps, involved in an ad hoc study group for an anatomy midterm?”

Liam chuckled softly. “No, you’re right. Looking back on it, there was a sexual element to it. But we did it because we had no other outlet. It’s not like girls were throwing themselves at us.”

“They do that?” Bryce asked in a shocked whisper. “My, my. Heterosexuality is like another country.”

“They don’t literally do that, no. And certainly not at pimply-faced hormonal teenage boys. But that’s my point: in the absence of any willing female, guys will sometimes turn to other guys out of desperation. It’s like what happens in prison, or in your beloved British Navy.”

“I’m not ashamed to report that I am intimately familiar with what happens in both places, having viewed both the entire run of Oz and several tours of HMS Pinafore.”

“I see. Well, my point is that men will turn to sex with other men in those situations; it doesn’t mean they’re gay. It’s called situational homosexuality.”

“Oh, is it? Mm-hmm. So when one of your straight men makes the argument that he could never have sex with another man, what he really means is that he could never have sex with another man unless the conditions were right? Something involving a dimly lit prison shower or some kind of musical production number on a sailing vessel?”

“No, that’s not what—”

“Because if a man is capable of having sex with another man under any circumstances, then he is capable of having sex with another man, full stop.”

“I beg to differ. If there are no other options, then it doesn’t make him gay. It simply means he had no other options.”

“You are welcome to beg, dear. I do enjoy that. But what you are asking me to believe is that in those situations, sex is more important than heterosexuality.”

Liam was silent for a moment. “Well, in a sense.”

“So summing up, your definition of heterosexuality is that quality that makes men want to have sex only with women, unless there are no women around, in which case they will have sex with other men but call themselves heterosexual because they would have chosen to have sex with a woman, save for the unfortunate fact that no women presented themselves. Heterosexuality is, therefore, dependent upon the presence of women. Which means that men who have sex with women are merely situationally heterosexual. Or do I misunderstand your argument?”

“Um, well….” Liam cleared his throat. “I think we have to look at who they would choose to have sex with. If a man in prison would prefer to have sex with women, then we would consider him straight. Even if he… um, has sex with other men.”

“Ah, so sexuality is entirely dependent on what one chooses to call oneself, regardless of the actual sex one is having? I would counsel caution along that line of reasoning, my dear, because it leads to the conclusion that heterosexuality is just as much a choice as homosexuality, and it need not have any basis in actual practice. Now, personally, I like the sound of that very much, because it means anyone can have any kind of sex they like and not worry about what to call oneself at Thanksgiving dinner with the family. But I think you’ll find that many straight men would prefer to think of their heterosexuality as being a permanent part of their character.”

“Indeed.”

“And yet that doesn’t explain all those prison assignations, does it? Or perhaps you have a different understanding of what constitutes a ‘permanent part of their character.’”

“This is all really confusing, Bryce. We’re just trying to plan a bachelor party.”

“Indeed we are. Look at me, getting all wrapped up in the Socratic particulars when there’s a party to plan. All I want to say is that we should perhaps worry less about whether everyone stays within their comfort zone, be that zone straight or fabulous, and more about how to make the evening memorable for our darling boys.”

“What do you think about two venues for the party—we could start at one where the straight guests would be more comfortable and then move to the other as the evening progresses?”

“Logistically speaking, I think it’s a wonderful plan, because it means by the time everyone’s getting tipsy, we’ll be in a place where they can all dance together. But are straight boys really so fragile that they need a protected environment in which to have a drink and socialize?”

“Let’s think about that. Do you have a place in mind for the second half of the party?”

“Oh, yes. There’s a newish club called Burn that I think would be perfect.”

“And this Burn, what’s it like?”

“Hot hot hot. Their dance floor is the stuff of legend, the music impeccably curated, and the staff—honey, one look at the bartenders and your straight boys are going to wish they were in prison.”

“I see your point about getting the straight ones drunk before we get there. I think it’ll make it easier for them. Now, is there a suitably straight place nearby? Something cigar- or sports bar-like?”

“Ah, of course,” Bryce replied. “A place for the men to suck on cigars and watch other men smash themselves together on television. Goodness, those straight-boy rituals can be so hot.” Bryce paused to fan himself. “It just so happens, darling, that there is such an establishment not two blocks away. When it opened we all said ‘there goes the neighborhood’ because we feared it would bring in too many straight people and suddenly you can’t walk home at night without seeing heterosexuals pawing at each other on the street like animals, but I am happy to say that they seem to be behaving themselves.”

“Don’t like having heterosexuality shoved down your throat, eh?” Liam asked with a chuckle.

“Oh, quite the contrary,” Bryce replied. “I think we know each other well enough by this point for you to understand that my throat is quite accommodating to heterosexuality. It’s just when it involves women that I get a little queasy.”

Liam dissolved into laughter. “All right, my good man. How about this: since I live some distance from the city, can you pay a visit to the venues, and if they seem suitable, perhaps you can take Ethan and Gabriel there to make sure they’re comfortable with them?”

“It would be my great pleasure, sir,” Bryce replied.

“Excellent. Bryce, I look forward to meeting you in person.”

“As do I. Seeing you in the flesh will be a dream come true for me.”

“Uh, thanks? Anyway, it’s been great to talk with you, and let me know how it goes, okay?”

“I shall report back on our reconnaissance the very moment everyone sobers up. On that you may rely.”